46FB5081.JPG Event on 4/28/04 in San Francisco. Phil Matier and Andy Ross for their column logo. Liz Mangelsdorf / The Chronicle

Photo: Liz Mangelsdorf, SFC

46FB5081.JPG Event on 4/28/04 in San Francisco. Phil Matier and...

Image 2 of 2

David Eiland, who runs "Just For Fun," holds one of the $14.95 candles he sells like hotcakes. A 24th Street store in San Francisco, CA is selling candles with the likeness of President Barack Obama in religious gowns. "Just For Fun" store has sold hundreds of the smaller $14.95 candles and has a large $395 candle in the window as well Thursday, February 12, 2009.

He may be the Second Coming to many San Franciscans - but one local Catholic priest wants a popular prayer candle with President Obama's picture on it pulled from a local gift shop, saying it "mocks Jesus" and "depicts our beloved saints in a not so saintly way."

The Rev. Tony La Torre of St. Philip the Apostle Church, in ever-hip Noe Valley, is so riled up that he's calling for a boycott of the neighborhood's Just For Fun card and novelty shop, which has been selling the $15 candles at a fast clip.

The candles feature the president's halo-adorned head plastered onto the crucifix-clutching body of St. Martin de Porres, the Peruvian-born friar regarded as one of the first black saints in the Americas.

"I am appalled that in such a family-oriented neighborhood, any retailer would be so bigoted and so hateful (as) to carry such merchandise just to 'make a buck,' " La Torre declared recently in the parish newsletter.

Store owners Robert Ramseyand David Eilandsay they've sold more than 700 candles since putting them on display over the Christmas holiday.

And while the candles are a big hit, Ramsey says they're not much different from the line of gag gifts they've been selling without complaint at the store on upper 24th Street for the past 22 years.

"Believe me, there is a lot of nasty stuff you can sell - you can get it down in the Castro," Ramsey said. "This is just fun stuff."

But to La Torre, the candles featured in a big window display were "the final straw" for a store "that feels the need to mock and ridicule the Catholic/Christian faith."

It's not first time "anti-Catholic, anti-Christian" attitudes, as La Torre calls them, have been decried in the city.

A couple of years back, Archbishop George Niederauersaid he had been duped into giving communion to a couple of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence - cross-dressing, prankster "nuns" - prompting outrage from religious conservatives across the country.

The candle commotion might have passed quickly, except that La Torre also described the store's owners as Jewish (they're not) and urged parishioners not only to boycott the store but to "be sure to poke your head in ... and tell them why."

The San Francisco Archdiocese weighed in, contacting the priest to express its concern over his "Jewish" reference. La Torre has since retracted the reference, saying he only meant that the owners - if Jewish, as he says he was led to believe - "should know what it feels like to be mocked and ridiculed."

The flap hit the front page of the local Noe Valley Voice, and the store's owners found themselves besieged with questions from all sides.

The owners ignored La Torre's offer to meet with them to discuss his concerns, but did post a copy of the priest's newsletter in their store window - right next to the king-size, 2-foot-tall version of the Obama candle that had set him off.

So far, the only effect of the controversy seems to be free advertising and a demand for even more candles.

"Tomorrow, I got 72 more coming," Ramsey said.

The other budget: At least one kind of spending shows no signs of letting up in these lean times - special interest spending up in the state capital.

Labor unions, business associations and other special interest groups spent more than $558 million to influence California government during the 2007-08 legislative session, according to an analysis by Capital Weekly.

Overall, special interest spending was up $54 million over the previous legislative session.

Sort of their own "special" stimulus package.

Some offer: After a BART cop fatally shot passenger Oscar Grant early New Year's Day, a group of mostly black ministers showed up at agency headquarters to suggest ways BART could mend fences with the community.

One suggestion: Take out an ad in the Oakland Post, a newspaper serving the black community that is run by longtime activist Paul Cobb.

The Rev. Dion Evans, who made the suggestion, also writes for the paper, and even offered to help with the introductions to the paper's advertising department.

The minister then suggested that because the mother of Grant's young daughter is Latina, BART should also reach out with an ad in El Mundo - a Spanish-language paper also owned by Cobb.

BART dutifully agreed with the first suggestion, and bought a full-page ad in the Post for nearly $5,000.

But when BART staff found out the second ad in El Mundo would cost nearly another $5,000, it drew the line.

Cobb told us Friday that Evans is an "independent contractor" - not a staff writer - and that he had not been at the BART meeting as a representative of the newspaper or its ad department.

"I did not send him down there ... (and) we did not ask him to do that," Cobb said. "I think this is kind of an unfair hit."

We should also point out that the BART ad didn't seem to influence the paper's coverage - judging by the fact that the day the ad ran, the paper's front page was devoted almost exclusively to the Grant killing under the banner headline, "D.A.: 'It's Murder.' "